Lillian Lincoln Lambert

Over the course of our lives, we all have successes, disappointments, hardships, failures and other things that shape our character and help to develop wisdom. Wisdom is acquired over time based on a variety of experiences. I once had a pastor who said that youth and wisdom do not reside in the same body. There is some truth in that statement but wisdom does not automatically come with age. Instead, it depends on your capacity to bring into play the experiences from all that life has handed you.

I speak from experience. As a young girl, growing up on a farm in the South, I wanted nothing more than to leave that farm when I became 18, an adult, and head to New York City. I knew what was best for me and more education was not it! It took about four years of struggling to survive in the “big city”, working menial jobs and living from hand-to-mouth before I realized that an education was the key to a better life. For me, it took the experience of struggling to survive in the “big city” with no salable skills that caused me to wise up.

Have you determined your own definition of success? If you have, that to me is the first step toward success.  Defining your own success can be more challenging than following a cookie-cutter path.  However,  it’s also more rewarding.

You will need to develop your own roadmap to defining success for yourself.  I have developed some principles that help guide me as I continue on my journey. There are two dominant principles that keep me focused.

The first principle: To thine own self be true. Translated, this means forgetting about keeping up with the Joneses. The truth is, no one knows what the Joneses are doing or how well the Joneses are doing. We all know the saying; the grass looks greener on the other side. It may look greener because we may be wearing “rose-color” glasses. The same may be true of the Joneses. They may look successful, but are they? If you gauge your success by the successful appearance of others, you may be heading down the wrong path. Instead of looking outside yourself, what you first need to do is go inward and search your heart and soul. You yourself have the ability to determine what things are important in your life. Once you have done that, you are on your way to defining success.

The second principle: acknowledge that there is no such thing as having it all. I don’t know when we first were told that we could have it all and many of us are still trying. You’ll kill yourself attempting to achieve an impossible goal.  Life is about setting priorities and making choices based on your belief system.

Success on my own terms means doing the work I love, enjoying life, meeting new people, pursuing new goals and committing myself to causes…most of all it means being true to myself, for this is the only life I have and I want to have it my way.

For more than thirty years, I have been an entrepreneur. I thoroughly enjoy that role with all of its challenges: the people problems, financial concerns, growing and managing the company and many others. I find the rewards well worth the challenges. It is one of the best ways to build wealth. Because there are so many challenges, entrepreneurs sometimes find it difficulty to do everything that needs to be done. This is my perspective on things that definitely need your attention even as you grow and face the challenges that await you.

1.   Learn everything you can about your industry, particularly the financials. The years I spent working in my industry gave me valuable experience that was useful when I started my own company. I learned things that I should do as well as things I should not do.

2.  Develop good people skills: treat everyone with respect no matter what their position is in an organization. Frequently the administrative assistant has all the power and can help you the most.

3.   Stay close to your customers.
4.   Establish and maintain a good banking relationship. Interview your banker and be sure the bank is there for you in good and bad times.

5.   Maintain impeccable credit, both personal and business.

6.   Operate every day as if your company is for sale.

7.   Develop an investment portfolio outside of your company.

8.   Live within your means, better yet, live below your means.

9.   Develop a succession plan.

10.   Know thyself: know when it’s time to let go and move on.

11.    Maintain proper balance between work and family, take care of yourself and have fun.

If you are an entrepreneur, you have probably dealt with the doubting Thomases- those who tell you it can’t be done or you can’t do it. If your business is new and you have not encountered them, you will. Be sure you have done your homework and are strong in your conviction. There are numerous dream killers. Don’t be one of their victims.

DON’T LET ANYONE STEAL YOUR DREAM.

FOLLOW YOUR HEART, DREAM BIG, AND ACT NOW.

I believe in the power of story telling to make a point, so I’d like to relate a story I read in a publication, Bob Proctor Insights, about a mother and daughter as told by the mother.

I had promised my daughter that I would accompany her to a daffodil garden near her house. The day I had agreed to go was rainy and foggy so I was reluctant to go. However, I decided to take the long drive hoping she would change her mind. Upon arrival at her house, she and the kids were ready to leave. Driving through the inclement weather, I wondered why this was so important to my daughter.

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little stone church. On the far side of the church, I saw a pine needle covered path and an inconspicuous, lettered sign “Daffodil Garden.” Around the corner of the path, before me lay the most glorious sight, it looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes where it had run into every crevice and over every rise.

The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron and butter yellow: Five acres of flowers! “Who had done this,” I asked my daughter. “Who?” I asked again, almost speechless with wonder, “How, why, and when?”
“Its just one woman,” she answered. “She lives on the property. That’s her home.” She pointed to a well-kept frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory.

On the patio, I saw a poster. “Answers to the questions I know you are asking”, was the headline. The first answer was a simple one: “50,000 bulbs,” The second answer was “one at a time, by one woman, two hands, two feet, and a very little brain.” The third answer was “began in 1958.”
There it was the daffodil principle.

That was a life changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who more than thirty-five years before, had begun one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. One bulb at a time. There was no other way to do it, one bulb at a time. No short cuts – simply loving the slow process of planting and loving the work as it unfolded.

The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principle of celebration: learning to move toward our goals and desires one-step at a time, often just one baby step at a time, learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time.

When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. The thought of it filled my mind. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the implications of what I had seen. “It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to my daughter. “What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty five years ago and had worked at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My wise daughter put the car into gear and summed up the message of the day in her direct way. “Start tomorrow”, she said! “It is pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson a celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, HOW CAN I PUT THIS TO USE TOMORROW?”

Lessons to learn:

• Don’t let your obstacles and challenges discourage you from reaching your goals
• It is never too late to start toward your goals.
• Goals are guides that need to be reviewed on a frequent basis and altered as required.
• We don’t achieve our goals by ourselves. Other people, whom I call our guardian angels, help us along the way. We must remember to acknowledge those who’ve helped us on our journey.
• Sometimes we need someone to do to us what birds do to their young: Kick them out of the nest.

• Is there a smaller dream that might be the first step in getting to the larger dream?
• What skills do you have that will aid you in the pursuit of this dream?
• What steps can you take today toward pursuing your dream?

When you uncover what you love to do and recognize your inherent skills, you’ll realize that there are opportunities to follow your dream all around you.

While I don’t claim to be an expert on religion, as I look back over the years, and examine the development of events. I am convinced that it was Divine Intervention that caused both Martin Luther King and Barack Obama to pursue their life’s purpose with such dedication and vigor. I feel that Martin King was put on this Earth for a very specific purpose, just as we all are, but he was more dogmatic than most of us in finding and continuing to work at his life’s purpose. MLK’s life work was cut short by his untimely death. Yet, he lives on in Barack Obama. I reflect back on this young man who seemingly came out of nowhere to become a US Senator, who gave a dynamic speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and ran for president in 2008. This young man, Barack Obama, spoke of Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope. HE SAID “In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. Yes, Barack Obama is carrying “MLK’s Dream” to the highest office in the United States. An African-American whose name “Barack” means “Blessed!”

We all have our personal stories. Growing up in a small farming village in VA, not only did I not plan to go to Harvard but I had no plans to go to college until I was forced to look at my circumstances and realize that I needed a college education to make something of myself. So at the ripe age of 22 years old, I became a full-time student at Howard University and that changed the course of my life. That’s WHERE I was influenced by a professor, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, who became my mentor and who had gotten his MBA from HBS, one of the first black men to do so in 1933. Never in my life had I heard a black person speak with such conviction and eloquence about business and our race. I was transfixed by his words: “Business is a way for blacks to take control of their destiny.”

How did I, a poor, black farm girl from Ballsville, Virginia, end up here? , Why am I here? In that instant there was my dear mother, a former school teacher who wanted nothing more than for her daughter to continue her education; my mentor at Howard University, Professor Fitzhugh, another professor at Howard who handed me a Harvard Business School application and demanded that I complete it’ a cousin who kept nagging me to stop wasting my time in menial jobs and go to college. Finally, there was my father, a man with a 3rd grade education , who didn’t even know the name of the school but was so proud to tell everyone that “Lillian is going to the same school that President Kennedy went to.” Reflecting on all these people, I knew the course of my life was set: I had a responsibility, and I could not disappoint the people who supported me. I had to move forward.

Throughout the campaign the President emphasized the need for everyone to become involved. It does not need to be big but something as small as tutoring a child, or working in a soup kitchen or just picking up pieces as trash instead of walking by it. It is so simplistic. Sometimes we look for complicated answers and overlook simple solutions. Just a few hours of your time. You will be the richer for it. We must all do our part. In his speech in Phila. on Sat as part of his train ride to DC, he again emphasized the need for service and announced the creation of – Organizing for America – an organization through which everyone can find something to do. And he said, “Let’s make sure this election is not the end of what we do to chance America, but the beginning.” That was his dream and he took every step imaginable to get there. There is a role for each of us. Have you decided what your part will be?